The ALL-BOSS challenge

So some time ago I built arenas to destroy all the pre-hardmode bosses simultaneously, and to destroy hardmode bosses simultaneously, but I often wondered if I could merge the two and fight all the bosses together. After many months of putting it off, I finally started working on this a few days ago, and after many trials and test runs, I finally succeeded. The ALL-BOSS challenge is as follows:

1) Bosses must all be summoned first before any bosses are killed
2) Bosses can only die once the player goes AFK, not before
3) No glitches, exploits, or bugs can be used (specifically no dungeon spikes or mob statues to mitigate damage are allowed, and hoiks are not allowed either)

This challenge is definitely not so simple, mainly because of the need to summon the Wall of Flesh, Plantera, and Duke Fishron. The good news is that Fishron can be summoned even in the cavern layer, but then the player needs to drop down to the underworld to summon the WoF otherwise bad things will happen. The Plantera bulb fortunately can spawn on any jungle surface, and will eventually spawn on all free jungle surfaces separated by 150-300 blocks from any other bulbs.

Survival is also not so easy since the slime statue exploit is not permitted in this challenge. This means the player has to lean on heart statues since even teleporting around will not stop Plantera and Fishron from hurting the player significantly. The problem is that all the bosses drop hearts upon death, which can block heart spawns from statues since there's a limit of 10 anywhere in the world. This necessitates using lava to burn fallen hearts. Still, King Slime can spawn in the ocean where Duke Fishron is summoned, so it's also tricky to destroy the hearts there - I managed to do it with a loch system that allows items to fall to lava from the bottom of the ocean.

Here's the video of the feat:



Here's the schematic:



Now the question is whether I can add the Dungeon Guardian into the mix, even though the Dungeon Guardian is not a "real" boss. Unfortunately moon event bosses cannot be added because they are incompatible with the Wall of Flesh, but I'll post separate challenges for Moon events + hardmode bosses.

As always, I'll have a map download available once I polish the build a little more!

 

You are ridiculous. I cant possibly compete.

 

Wow, that's one hell of a contraption! Longest wiring loom eva! Must have taken a lot of fiddling to get all this together in one place. I can't even figure out all the things going on in there...

I see you posted this up as a guide page too (for reference).

So is this a straight up "showcase", or would you like the group's help/suggestions with anything? Or are you laying down the gauntlet to see if we can beat your time, or make the same achievement with a more efficient setup? Actually, as well as doing the DG, I don't see why you couldn't do one of PM or Frost Moon up on the surface (with the other bosses) and then drop down to hell for WoF... Shame both moons (and the invasions) can't be initiated without clicking different inventory slots, else you could just do them all sequentially...

 

OMG why?

 

Both. There is still room for one major improvement - getting the Dungeon Guardian into the action, even though it's not really a boss. The other thing I'm not too happy with is the size of the plantera bulb spawn box. I'd be curious what exactly the spawn rate is on this thing, and whether a "mature" world filled with bulbs to the absolute limit (bulbs cannot spawn within 150-300 blocks according to the wiki) would maximize the spawn rate on such a small surface. I designed a variety of farms with artificial jungles and always got a bulb to show up, the longest taking about 6 hours of playing for one to pop up on a ~30 block jungle grass stretch, but this farm has a much shorter stretch. I want to make sure this farm is reusable, and right now the only things that need resetting are the bulb regrowing and the clothier spawning in again (and assigning the clothier to the room inside this farm).

There technically is a way to fight on the surface while the WoF is below . I'm also not sure if bosses summoned would block the moon trash mob spawns, slowing the progression through the moon waves, since moon events have their own fixed spawn rate. I'll be working on integrating the moon events with other bosses, so there's another challenge for everyone .

 

Actually, come to think of it, you *could* do all bosses, moons and invasions, if you allow sequential bosses, but still with no user intervention... You could set the inventory to an empty slot, hold LMB with a rubber band (or whatever), then auto-dispense the necessary summoning items along a automated minecart tour of auto-arenas... Although, what inventory slots do those items go to?... It's not the top bar is it? Nuts.

 

This is actually a very interesting idea, although minecarts would be a no-go since activating a boss summon would cause the player to pop out of the cart. Hoiks would be doable though, although they'd have to be on fairly long timers.

Holding the LMB won't work, but having a way of constantly tapping the LMB with an empty inventory slot open would work. When a boss summon item is picked up the constant tapping of the LMB would activate the item, consuming it and opening up the slot again. I think sequential beating of the bosses would be fine so long as the the first boss is killed only after the player goes AFK and stays AFK for the remainder of the fights.

So now I'm wondering - how could we construct an effective timer that could activate an event 9 minutes later? I have shorter timers involving birds running through mazes and opening gates for subsequent birds to travel through in the chain farms, but to do that for 9 minutes would require one massive maze. I'm wondering if there's a simpler more elegant way of doing it.

EDIT: come to think of it, there is a way of using Full Metal Kirby's idea from his automated WoF farm - using an NPC to trigger plates. For instance, after an NPC is killed off prior to a Moon event, then that NPC will respawn once the night is over. When the respawn is limited to just one home in the world that home can be outfitted with a pressure plate to hoik the player elsewhere.

 

WOW. I have no words for that video... that was AMAZING. and the wiring was intense and everywhere. nice!

 

Wow, so I was wrong on three counts there... Not thinking very clearly.

Yeah, d'uh...

Again, yeah, sorry (been thinking about auto-swinging Horseman's blade and such). I actually already have a mouse macro (on wheel left) that repeatedly clicks LMB, programmed in for the sake of RSI.

I've basically made something that can do this in my next vid. Although, you could use a variation on Sir Cheddar's 1 minute egg timer (bird tower).

Actually, it *is*... so this *could* work.... hmmm. One major issue is making sure to avoid hitting the dropped item limit, else the summon items will go poof! But as long as you're picking up/destroying most drops, you could load up a big stack dispenser and auto-repeat farming the same boss or event for a long while. Like one of those automatic cat food dispensers...

 

Yes that would work nicely!

I forgot about his post, even though I liked it so long ago! I ended up making something along those lines in a couple of the grinders - here's one example:



The timer is on the far right, and it involves a bird statue spawning birds that snake through a maze and keep opening paths for subsequent birds. I never bothered measuring the length of time for a cycle because the timer was "long enough" for the grinder, but I imagine if the maze is large enough and the number of alternate paths that keep getting open is increased you could eventually reach 9 minutes. I'm curious whether something more compact can be created. I also look forward to what you came up with in your upcoming video!

Yes, although for Frost Moon the drops are not too worrisome if the coins and hearts are burned up in lava. Pumpkin Moon is a bit trickier since the autofarms can reach final wave times very quickly, and at that point eh drops are guaranteed. The idea of a dispenser is pretty clever though!

 

Please don't get disheartened will you? I get that it is like walking in at the end of a maths lesson and not having a clue what you're looking at. But be assured that this behemoth wasn't spontaneously drawn, fully formed and functional, straight from DicemanX's head! It's just the product of a sequence of small steps that anyone could have followed, given the same amount of time and motivation. The end result is pretty bananas though... (Also, it's inception was lubricated by use of TEdit, so ok, a longer series of steps for non-PC users.)

Why?... Lol! Well, obviously building something like this is a long way from being an efficient way to get through all the bosses in the game. But then gaming isn't exactly an efficient way to get through your life in the first place! It's not like it feeds you, earns money or makes you attractive to ladies... It's for relaxation, reward and fulfilment.

Perhaps making these kind of machines is fairly far from the most relaxing way I could use Terraria, but personally I feel a need to shape the world around me, to create and explore things that have never existed yet in the history of everything. 'Playing' with this kind of creative endeavour is likely to impart transferable cognitive skills too; mental dexterity from examining things from new angles, and loftier expectations of how much can be achieved by subverting the real world too.

 

Im not disheartened - I just dont have the skills, or the free time, or the technical knowledge, to set something like that up. I like engineering and wiring. I really enjoy automating stuff. It is a lot of fun to see the results.

I imagine what I meant to say was simply, I am impressed by what was built here.

Also that there isnt a way to do this particular thing for me since minecarts and Fishron, and Frost Moon are not available to me. Also also, that I cannot currently even solo the pumpkin moon. Im trying to set up better traps but I cant DPS enough to hit 15.

 

Fair enough - free time and brain power are scarce resources indeed.

Yeah, I didn't manage wave 15 until I built a damage blocking arena, and that wasn't easy to get right at all! Only just this morning killed Fishron for the first time. He's a tough customer - it seems mellee is not an option in a non-crimson world, and I'm not skilled enough for ranger (without an auto-arena, which I'm just trying out).

 

Maybe after scouring a few more temples I will have enough traps. Ive been using spiky balls and lava mostly in my pumpkin moon place but after seeing the difference I will DEFINITELY be switching to spears.

 

Don't worry, we'll bring you up to speed, along with everyone else! I plan on creating some threads focusing on individual components of all the farms I build, since the farms are really just a bunch of interlocking parts that can be individually dissected. I didn't have any tech skills or knowledge either when I started earlier this year, and I had to learn a lot by trial and error and through feedback from others, but this group should definitely accelerate the learning process for everyone (even for me, since I've learned things already from this group). We'll get you building elaborate contraptions in no time!

 

It kind of makes you WANT to stop building things like, for example, a Hallowed Key farm, when you kill a monster and get your Hallowed Key halfway through building it.

(I didnt want to do it anyway. I hate Wraiths.)

 

I'm going to have to start focusing a bit more on architecture as I polish some of these farms. Here's a spruced up version of the grinder I dub the stone maiden, a foreboding structure by the ocean...

 

OK so I ran into a bit of an issue with the Skeleton statue in the above-ground area depicted above. The problem is that it won't turn on sometimes, and I have no idea why. The switches for the statue are in two places - one is via the lever at ground level just above the safe, and the other is the pressure plate above the teleporter on the left just below the Lihzahrd altar, which is used to get the player into the three teleport system to evade bosses. The statue works fine if I put down a switch and lead it to the statue at a position closer to the statue and turn on the switch.

The issue is not with the wiring, because sometimes the statue works fine when I use the lever and pressure plate. Also, if I replace the Skeleton statue with other statues (Bird and Crab is what I tried) then everything works fine. This is extremely puzzling. I swapped the bird statue for the skeleton statue to avoid getting the bird killed by spawned bosses when building the all-boss arena, because the bird would occasionally die. However, the bird statue in the underworld arena would also not spawn sometimes.

I have never had these problems before, and I built and used the arena at ground level by the ocean with no hitches for a long while. It's all of a sudden that the statues refuse to activate. And since the statue sometimes works, the wiring is fine. I wonder if there's some issue with using statues at the edge of the world. Any clues as to why I'm occasionally not getting statue spawns?

EDIT: So I tried removing some of the existing wiring and adding wires along a different route to the same lever and pressure plate. Now the spawns are consistent from the Skeleton statue. Then I exited Terraria, re-entered, and now the skeleton again won't spawn. Very strange.

 

I know what you mean. Just fiddling with truffle worm farming, and by the time I got it (them) working well, I already had a couple hundred worms! Although, I definitely needed to start making something, since I hadn't manage to catch a single one in the 'wild'.

The game balance is obviously more levelled at slightly obsessive grinding, so mechanisation is generally overkill. But I'm finding it more and more necessary towards the end (credit to Redigit's content updates). Also hoping that if we can post good guides, with simple, effective auto-farm builds, they can be a bona fide alternative play-through approach. Players already look up walkthroughs at the drop of hat, so being dependant on other people's machine designs should not invalidate the gaming experience.

Hmmm. So is it always off screen when it fails? (although generally my skeleton engines would keep spawning out past 200 tiles away.) And does it only fail when bosses are about? (In which case it might be something to do with their presence making de-spawning a higher priority.) Otherwise I'd just say that it's some kind of issue with the game's wiring analysis. You do have some long lengths of wire there, and perhaps more than ever in that world in total...

You've also TEdited it. I've had some really strange wiring glitches in some experimental setups (that also happen to have had skeletons and arrays of pressure plates with long wiring looms), where signals were taking impossible paths, unrelated to the visible wiring. It could be an issue a little like TEdit's treatment of inactive blocks - it doesn't seem to reset a tile's inactivity status when erasing an inactive block from it. These ghost tiles can then make a right mess later, as they copy-paste too. Any thoughts @critcodedtuna , or anyone?

 

It was failing on and off screen.

It was failing with and without bosses. I would load up the world, go to the farm and push the lever, and nothing.

If this was the case, then we might assume that it would always fail, but it didn't always fail (works fine with other statues or if the path is rerouted). Alternately, if it was causing erratic signaling, it likely wouldn't be localized and also unlikely that it would only happen with one statue.

No TEdit-related issue in this case (although that issue with actuated spaces is really annoying), since this ocean level farm was the original that was built a while ago, and this particular wiring was by hand instead of a copy/paste. The parallel snake of wires was via TEdit, but not the smaller simpler stretches of wire. This is why it's so puzzling. Plus, a bird statue and crab statue work fine, just not a skeleton statue, and the skeleton statue was placed by hand. I changed it to a crab statue permanently, but I still wouldn't mind trying to figure out what happened.